5 LSAT Myths Debunked

As with any exam, the LSAT has some myths that are circulated out there. I don’t know what you’ve heard about the exam, but I’m going to obliterate the 5 most common myths that I’ve come across, so that you don’t have to stress out about them.

LSAT Myth #2 – You can not Improve your Reading Comprehension Score

This myth actually has some teeth. However, it is extremely misleading, especially since it has a superlative in it (). The fact is, improving your reading comprehension scores is much more difficult than improving your scores in the other sections. However, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Shoot, it doesn’t even mean it’s improbable.

All it means is that you’ll need to work a little bit harder to get better scores.

LSAT Myth #3 – If you get good grades, you don’t need to study as much for the LSAT

This is a myth propagated by the students with average grades. I’m not going to lie, I would have loved it if every student with a 3.6 or higher GPA thought this. It would have made my score look even more competitive.

The fact is, while there is a correlation between grades and LSAT scores, the correlation doesn’t come automatically because of the grades themselves. It’s more likely related to the fact that students with better grades tend to test better across the board than students with lower grades.

But, not studying, and taking the exam without having looked at it, will kill your score regardless of your GPA. It’s a tough test, and it’s not like any exam you’ve taken before.

LSAT Myth #4 – The LSAT is Graded on a Curve

I’m actually not 100 percent sure if this is a real myth. I have heard a couple of potential LSAT takers bring this up, but the fact is, it’s just not true. The test is just written in a way that the same percentage of people score the same scores every year, give or take 1 or 2 points. While the results look like a bell curve, it’s not because the scores are given based on how individual exam results compare to each other.

It just so happens that the majority of the LSAT takers score around 150.

LSAT Myth #5 – You get Penalized for Missing Questions

The last LSAT Myth is just as false as the first one. There is no penalty for missing a question. It says so on the test instructions. You just get points for correct answers. That means the worst thing that could happen to you is that you don’t get a point.

Just don’t leave a question blank. If you fill in the bubbles randomly, at least you’ll still have a 1 in 4 chance of scoring a point. That’s way better than ZERO chance, right?

Most Popular Resources

More from Clemmonsdogpark:

About Randall

Randall earned his JD from the University of Denver in 2013. He received his BA in Communications and Social Science from the University of Washington in 2010. Randall took the LSAT twice, and managed to improve his score by 14 points the second time around. He paid the price of learning to score high on the LSAT and hopes to help other potential law students avoid similar pain.

No comments yet.

Clemmonsdogpark blog comment policy: To create the best experience for our readers, we will only approve comments that are relevant to the article, general enough to be helpful to other students, concise, and well-written! 😄 Due to the high volume of comments across all of our blogs, we cannot promise that all comments will receive responses from our instructors.

We highly encourage students to help each other out and respond to other students' comments if you can!

If you are a Premium Clemmonsdogpark student and would like more personalized service from our instructors, you can use the Help tab on the Clemmonsdogpark dashboard. Thanks!